In class Monday we watched a video on what motivates us. This is my second time watching this and I loved it just as much this time as I did the first. He took a very effective approach with this lecture. He started out explaining the typical assumption, if you reward something you get more behavior you want, and if you punish something, you get less behavior you want. This said, top performers get a bigger reward and lower performers are ignored. Four economists, two from MIT, one from University of Chicago, and one from Carnegie Mellon, did a study that proved this assumption wrong. They proved that a larger reward lead to poor performance when you are above rudimentary cognitive skill. When a task gets complicated this type of reward does not work. They discovered three factors that lead to better performance and personal satisfaction. These three factors are autonomy, mastery, and purpose. Autonomy is our desire to be self-directed. Mastery is the urge to get better at something. Purpose is the reason why you are at work and what you need to accomplish. We can relate these three factors to the equity theory, which we discussed in class. The equity theory is about incentives. If the incentives are beneficial to the employees, they will engage in activities they like. This is kind of like the company that gave employees 24 hours to work on whatever they wanted, however they wanted, and with whomever they wanted. In these 24 hours, employees accomplished a huge amount of work and came up with innovative ideas. There are three things that make up the equity theory, effort that leads to performance, which leads to various outcomes. Effort and autonomy can be related because the more effort you put into a task, usually you have a desire to get somewhere with your work. Performance and mastery can be related because everyone has the urge to excel at what they’re doing so their interactions within the company increase. Finally purpose can be related to the various outcomes as a result. You are working for a firm so you can produce results with the materials you’re working with.
What motivate you though? Like you said the more difficult the skill the less an external reward works. Many of these big companies think that just because they offer a bonus or an incentive they are going to achieve top performance. I love that that these economists created a movement and theory to prove this wrong. I enjoyed the video as well, and how they explained their opinions. It was a simple concept and explanation for everyone to understand.
ReplyDeleteDo you think what motivates you now will be different from what will motivate you in 5 to 10 years?
ReplyDeleteYeah, I want to know what motivates you as well. Money, autonomy, mastery, or purpose. A combo of both?
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